Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!mesard
From: mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: DISCUSSION
Message-ID: <48225@bbn.COM>
Date: 14 Nov 89 22:31:17 GMT
References: <8209@thor.acc.stolaf.edu> <17633.255a9307@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1989Nov12.201312.19380@acd4.UUCP> <17935.255eb032@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
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Reply-To: mesard@BBN.COM (Wayne Mesard)
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sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>If we
>tried to rmgroup/newgroup rec.games.frp to rec.games.rpg we would end up with
>two groups at many sites.  While renaming is a good idea (IMHO) it just isn't
>technically feasable.

This isn't a technical problem at all.  You described the technique
quite clearly in your article.  I agree that there would be a problem at
some sites.  The solution, however, is to make renaming more
commonplace.  Letting the namespace get more and more polluted until a
Great Renaming is necessary won't help anyone, since that process will
be much more time-consuming and political than fixing groups on an ad
hoc basis.

So rec.games.rpg, and comp.editors.emacs get created.  Messages get
posted to news.admin and the old groups warning that they're obsolete
and a month later the old groups get rmgrouped.  A lot of sites have
bogus groups and it hasn't caused the IDoU.

-- 
void *Wayne_Mesard();         Mesard@BBN.COM         BBN, Cambridge, MA